Assessment

The department of Assessment Implementation is responsible for maintaining assessment information, communicating assessment and accountability information for the district, supporting the testing coordinators, and developing regulations, program advisories, and other documents necessary to support state required assessment and accountability.

Today’s students must be prepared to enter an increasingly competitive world. For this reason, Mississippi is strengthening student assessment, school accreditation and accountability standards in an effort to raise student achievement. We are moving to a more comprehensive testing system that will measure what students are actually learning in Mississippi classrooms. The strength of this new system is the emphasis on criterion referenced tests designed to directly measure what is being taught. Norm-referenced tests will continue to be administered, providing data to compare the performance of students in Mississippi with that of other states, ensuring that students are competitive at a national level. The individual elements of the new assessment system fit together to provide a comprehensive picture of students’ strengths and weaknesses.